Good TV out card that can w/ no borders?

[Deptmaster]

I'm planing on making a standalone divx and dvd player. I'm trying to make it reasonable cheap and small, the only thing I'm not sure of right now is what video card to use. I've had bad experiences with TVout cards in the past and I'm really unsure of what to get. It can be either AGP or PCI based, has to be under $50USD, and be able to do good tv out without the black borders so i'm not stuck using zoomplayer. If any one has a good sugestion please let me know, and remember i dont care about 3d performance max resolution or anything that doesnt pertain to tvout.
Thanks alot everyone,
Ian.

[dragonlz]

if budget is a problem, get one of those TNT2's with TVOUT, they are cheap(around $35) and TV-OUT on nvidia's cards are usually pretty good.

[Brandon]

I have been using both the ATI Radeon LE w/tv out and an ATI Radeon VE w/tv out for a while and they work great. Cheap too. http://www.buyaib.com has the VE model for $46 US (+shipping).

ATI has been known for crappy drivers in the past, but the new ones released for XP seem to work flawlessly. At least for me, anyway...

[nimbus]

get an ati rage fury if you can find one.. they shouldn't be too much and they have amazing 2d quality and also have built in dvd decoder.. ie hardware not software. this will be the best option for the money more than likely.

[Deptmaster]

Both ATI cards sound like great options but I don't know about the riva tnt, Its a decent card I used to have one about 3 years ago but tv-out on all my nvidia cards has really disapointed me.

Does anyone know of a way to get rid of the black boxing effect you get when doing tv-out on ati cards? Like i said before I would rather not be forced into using zoom player to do everything.

And one more question. Does anyone know if i can setup either of these ati cards to automatically boot into tv-out mode when the system boots up? I have a Creative Labs geforce ddr card and the only why to get tv-out is too install they're crappy drivers that produce articating when i play divx movies and you have to manual turn on the tv-out option every time the system starts. I would be great if i could just set the card to start with tv-out enabled.

Here's the rest of what I'm planing on putting in this sucker.

Durron 600Mhz - recycled out of an old computer
ECS K7VZM MicroATX Motherboard - $60
128MB SDRAM - recycled out of an old computer
Video Card - Still Deciding
SB live 5.1 - $30, does dobly digital output
10GB 54k HDD - $60 couldnt find anything smaller
8X DVDROM - $40 plenty fast

I'm still looking around for a nice (hopefully black) MicroATX case and a IR remote/reciever. I want this computer to emulate a standard dvd player as closely as possible.

[Mikele]

Get a nVidia card with a Conexant TV chip. They're absolutely the best, and you can use TVTool to overscan the picture and adjust many settings. Chrontel chips are good too, but Conexant's picture is sharper and colors are brighter. Don't buy Philips chips, TVTool doesn't support them so you won't be able to get rid of the black borders.

[Brandon]

Originally posted by Deptmaster

Does anyone know of a way to get rid of the black boxing effect you get when doing tv-out on ati cards?
And one more question. Does anyone know if i can setup either of these ati cards to automatically boot into tv-out mode when the system boots up?

As long as there is no monitor connected to the card, it boots up to TV out.

As far as the black boxing effect, are you talking about overscan? My ATI cards don't have any problem w/that as there are adjustments in advanced display setup for the TV out that let you stretch, center, etc.

[Zhnujm]

i have a ati rage128 and when i plug in the cable to the tv everything is displayed on the tv (bios,dos,windows,....).
perfect for a pc without a monitor.
all ati cards with a "rage128 pro" or higher should have an overscan mode without any black bars.
mine "rage128" has a little black bar at the bottom.

[Zhnujm]

oh, somebody was faster than i ;)

[nimbus]

yeah I had no problems with my ati card and tv out. as was said go for the rage 128 chipset and you are set. enjoy :)

[Deptmaster]

That sounds great! I think I'm definatly going to check out the Conexant and the Rage128 chips. Oh and BTW does anyone one have a clue what tv chip creative labs put on their Geforce DDR cards cause either it sucks ass or its just the creative drivers. No native support for stretching the image to get rid of the boxing and I always get horizontal lines running down the image even when I tried two new monster S-video cables. And Its not my new 27" Sony Wega because i tried it with my friends dvd player and everything was fine. Scared the crap out of my though because the tv was only 3 months old at the time. I'm pretty sure its just a problem with my card that the signal strength is way to low. It would be nice to find a card with component out.:D

[Nihilistic]

Any ATI product will fufil your TV Out Needs at a reasonable price.
I use my ATI TV Wonder to output to my old Samsung TV and it has worked great under a variety of OS's. Its pretty cheap too, around 30-45 bucks and its got all sorts features. :)

[Brandon]

Originally posted by Deptmaster
I always get horizontal lines running down the image even when I tried two new monster S-video cables.D


That may have been caused by a ground loop between components or by a ground loop through the CATV network. I had the same problem, and fixed it by inserting an RF ground loop isolator @ the input of my VCR. For a quick test, just remove the coax cable input to your tv and vcr and see if your video noise problem goes away. If so, a ground loop isolator can be purchased from Radio Shack..

[Deptmaster]

I'll have to try that because if thats the case then i could probably use my old Creative geforce card with that tvtool (depending on the quality) because I'm planning on getting a Geforce3MX (with twinview) whenever the hell they finally get to the market. Thats going to drop the cost of putting this box together too; now I might be looking at only around $200 + MicroATX case + IR remote/reciever.
Not even that bad for a DVD player with a 480 progressive image (or i guess 600 because my tvout maxes at 800X600?) with dolby digital output. Throw in support for Divx CDs and DVD-Rs down the road and thats only makes it better.
If the video quality still sucks I'm deffinatly going to get one of the ATI rage cards though.
Thanks alot for the help everyone.

[Deptmaster]

Heres a picture the remote I'm probably going to get. With the reciever its just $20.

http://www.sigmadesigns.com/graphics/product_pics/remote.jpg
edit:not working right now for some reason

Heres the Case its $20 with a 145Watt powersupply, I might just go get something at the HSC down the street from my house.

http://www.softwareandstuff.com/media/h_cse_Cybermatx.jpg

[Evaldas]

Originally posted by Brandon

That may have been caused by a ground loop between components or by a ground loop through the CATV network. I had the same problem, and fixed it by inserting an RF ground loop isolator @ the input of my VCR. For a quick test, just remove the coax cable input to your tv and vcr and see if your video noise problem goes away. If so, a ground loop isolator can be purchased from Radio Shack..

I have the same problem scrolling horizontal lines, but i didn't find a solution to get rid of this. I unhooked the cable from tv input, but the lines are still there. What else I can do?

[Brandon]

Hmm, audio/video noise can be a very tricky thing to fix.

<snip long winded previous ground loop isolation nightmare stories>

I'm assuming you're running your gear (dvd,vcr,cd,divx machine,etc.) through an AV receiver that switches audio and video and outputs to your television.

You could try grounding (I think bonding would be the correct term) the chassis of your divx machine (computer) to the chassis of your AV receiver using a fairly heavy gauge wire. 14-16 gauge speaker cable should suffice. Just find a nice clean (unpainted) ground point on both pieces of equipment and attach the wire between the two.

Try that first.

You could also disconnect everything and connect everything back up one piece at a time to try to isolate the problem.

Be warned though, sometimes you're left with more questions than answers after lots of hair pulling and troubleshooting and testing...

ok.. I gotta tell this story :)
Last week at work, we had these nasty hum bars appear on our clients vga touch screen control panel..just out of nowhere.. so, for a couple of hours we had 3 techs stumped on troubleshooting this problem. It turned out to be a CATV RF modulator's chassis mounted to a structured wiring panel (catv/network distro) causing a ground loop through the cable&video system causing hum bars and buzzing through the _whole_house_ AV system.

in summation...video noise:yeeech

(anyone please feel free to share any possible solutions these types of problems, as they are quite common and can be a real bitch to fix)

[chemmajik]

After never figuring out my noise problem, I found the only way I could keep it to a minimum is use a vcr video out to the computer video in, but I loose true stereo. Best way to get good captures or better yet video out from digital cable box or satellite you get CD quality stereo audio too. Some have praised them TiVo's for having good amplification & noise free usage(some I said). I may have to try that ground loop isolator. Havent retested my cable amplifier out yet again, the cable connectors always break inside them cheap units 3rd time I have had to repair it.

[Emp3r0r]

I have the same problem with my cable and I remember reading this post almost a month ago so I went to radio shack yesterdy and bought some DC filter cause I couldn't remember the name. It didn't work so I've been searching these forums over 2 hours now and finally found it. GROUND LOOP ISOLATOR. I'm going to radio shack right now to pick one up. Thank you for your help.

PS: DAMN THE REASON THIS FORUM DOESN'T HAVE SEARCH!!!!

[chemmajik]

Let us know how that ground loop isolator helped or not.

[Emp3r0r]

well I never found one at radio shack so I finally searched the problem. I found a cheap solution to buy a 75 - 300ohm and 300 - 75ohm converters and hook them into the line. It didn't work! So I'm going to read some more and try and find a better solution.

[Macros746]

How can this post have been answered so many times and nobody
mention the Hollywood magic card? I have a Radeon AIW card
and the output is pretty darn good but once you have experienced
a Hollywood magic card there is no going back. The colors, the
resolution, the sound...everything is simply better. And the
damn thing only runs about $50. With the software divx plus you
can run Divx through it as well. Plus, with Eugene's DVD player
you can, with the click of a mouse, make it region-free, macrovision
free, controlled by remote...just about everything you might need.

Macros

[vinetu]

agree!